The present invention relates to telecommunications and telephone equipment.
Telephone companies currently offer subscriber services which provide information about a calling party. These services are commonly referred to as xe2x80x9cCaller IDxe2x80x9d, and are typically available to telephone subscribers for a small monthly fee. Devices which receive, store, and display Caller ID information are also widely available. Information about a calling party is typically received, stored, and displayed by a Caller ID device before a user would normally answer a ringing telephone.
Current telephone systems with caller ID capabilities operate by displaying the caller ID information on a LED screen when a call is received. In current telephone answering systems, the information about a calling party provided by Caller ID is not audibly presented to the calling party. Such audible information would be particularly helpful when it is not convenient to walk to the vicinity of a ringing telephone to read a Caller ID display, or when the user is visually impaired. Therefore, an improved telephone answering system and method is desired which audibly informs the user of the identity of the calling party in response to transmitted Caller ID information.
The present invention comprises a telephone calling party announcement system which stores telephone numbers and associated voice messages. A series of ring signals alerts a telephone subscriber to an incoming telephone call. Encoded calling party information (i.e., Caller ID information) transmitted between a first ring signal and a second ring signal is decoded, and the telephone number portion of the decoded Caller ID information is compared to the stored telephone numbers. If the telephone number portion of the Caller ID information matches a stored telephone number, a stored voice message associated with the telephone number is played back between or instead of subsequent ring signals. The stored voice message is typically the name of the calling party. In this case the name of the calling party is announced between subsequent ring signals, and before a user would normally answer a ringing telephone. Such an audible announcement would be particularly helpful when it is not convenient to walk to the vicinity of a ringing telephone to read a Caller ID display, or when the user is visually impaired. It is noted that the stored voice message also may also be played back in place of subsequent ring signals.
Proper operation of the telephone calling party announcement system requires that one or more telephone numbers and associated voice messages be provided by the user and stored within the telephone calling party announcement system. A telephone number is provided first, followed by the recording of an associated voice message. In a first embodiment, a control unit receives a telephone number. The telephone number may be the telephone number portion of stored Caller ID information from the last incoming telephone call, or may be entered by the user on a keypad located on a control panel. A voice message unit then receives and stores an associated voice message provided by the user. When storing the voice message, the voice message unit produces a message number associated with the stored voice message, and provides the message number to the control unit. The control unit stores both the telephone number and the message number of the associated voice message in a control memory unit.
When an incoming telephone call occurs, a caller ID decoder decodes the Caller ID information and provides the decoded Caller ID information to the control unit. The control unit compares the telephone number portion of the decoded Caller ID information to all telephone numbers stored in the control memory unit. If the telephone number portion of the Caller ID information matches a stored telephone number, the control unit asserts a playback control signal between subsequent ring signals. The playback control signal includes the message number associated with the telephone number of the calling party. Assertion of the playback control signal causes the voice message unit to play back the stored voice message information associated with the message number. During playback, the voice message unit produces electrical signals associated with the original voice message. These electrical signals are provided to a speaker. The speaker thus broadcasts the voice message between subsequent ring signals. The voice message can thus be used to audibly announce the calling party.
In the preferred embodiment, a digital signal processor (DSP) performs many of the functions of the caller ID decoder and the voice message unit of the first embodiment. An analog-to-digital converter and a digital-to-analog converter provide the necessary conversions for the DSP. In an alternate embodiment, separate discrete logic performs each of the functions.